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blasphemy

There are lots of articles and essays of interest to modern Pagans out there, sometimes more than I can write about in-depth in any given week. So The Wild Hunt must unleash the hounds in order to round them all up.

Witchy fashion? Spring 2013 Saint Laurent collection. (Photo: NYT)

Witches: Always fashionable. Quote: “Witchcraft and its moody expressions — long weedy hair, peaked hats and pointy boots — have attained a strange cachet of late. No longer the hideous wart-covered crone of folklore and fairy tale, the witch of current films, like “Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters” and “Oz: The Great and Powerful,” and recent youth-oriented novels like “Released Souls” and “A Discovery of Witches,” has swept aside the vampire as a symbol of power, glamour and style.”

Glub, glub! We’re submerged in the occult says “ex-Satanists” Jeff Harshbarger! Quote: “Our society is submerged in the occult; Harry Potter has filled the minds of our children for a decade and vampirism meets our teens with the illusions of grandeur. Witchcraft went mainstream decades ago, and Wicca is its offspring.” Sinister! Maybe all these “former occultists” should spend more time being better Christians instead of trying to sell books.

In an addendum to the Salem (Missouri) Public Library occult filtering case I reported on earlier this week, the Riverfront Times publishes the official, quite defensive, statement from the library on the case’s resolution. Quote: “Under the judgment, the library will continue to use the same internet screening provider it has used for many years. This is the same internet screening service provider as ninety percent of public libraries in Missouri. Months prior to the time the lawsuit was filed, the provider used by the library made changes in its minimal screening categories which the Salem Public Library and many other libraries in the state adopted. By agreeing to the consent judgment, the Salem Public Library does nothing more than agree to continue to use the new updated categories recommended by its service provider and adopted by the library before the suit was filed.” Shorter version: we will never admit we did anything wrong.

T. Thorn Coyle

T. Thorn Coyle writes for The Huffington Post about John Brennan, Sekhmet and the Fires of War. Quote: “We are damaging ourselves, our souls, and the earth. We are dealing out death at a distance, and slowly dying inside. Freedom is hard to bear. But so is war. So is our enslavement and inner blindness. How shall we waken to the light that dawns over the desert so beautifully? If life and death are sacred, what is our role in these wars being fought via real-time video? We try to distance ourselves from the cycles of the earth, but in the long run, this simply is not possible.”

The Havasupai Tribe and environmental groups are suing the U.S. Forest Service for failing to adequately protect land sacred to the tribe and moving forward on a controversial uranium mine. Quote: “The complaint (full text) in Grand Canyon Trust v. Williams, (D AZ, filed 3/7/2013) claims that the Forest Service failed to comply with environmental, mining, public land, and historic preservation laws. It alleges, among other things, that while the Forest Service has designated the area as Traditional Cultural Property and has recognized that it is a sacred site to the Havasupai Tribe and has begun consultations with the Tribe, it refuses to carry out a complete “Section 106 process” under the National Historic Preservation Act, which would include developing a memorandum of agreement with the tribe and state historic preservation office before restarting mining operations.”

Got caught being a scam artist? Convert to Christianity! It’s a fabulous PR move. Quote: “Chan converted to Christianity and renounced his former practice ofgeomancy just weeks before appearing in court for forging the will of one of Hong Kong’s richest women, billionaire Nina Wang, whom Chan also claimed to be his girlfriend.”

The site Pagan Dharma has returned from Internet limbo, Some of the rationale for why it’s back can be found, here.

Slate.com says the goddess Columbia is cool. Quote: “As a personification of the United States, Columbia is far less sinister and far more charismatic than her coattailed counterpart: She’s the goddess-like figure who inspired all the women in breastplates from the women’s suffrage marches of 1913.”

There are lots of articles and essays of interest to modern Pagans out there, sometimes more than I can write about in-depth in any given week. So The Wild Hunt must unleash the hounds in order to round them all up.

At Forbes, conservative Christian commentator Bill Flax admits that the United States isn’t a Christian nation (albeit with a number of caveats). Quote: “America wasn’t founded as a Christian nation and many of our beloved Forefathers sadly were not, yet America was largely comprised of Believers. Liberty allows us to worship freely or not at all per conscience. America was never meant to be theocratic or homogenous religiously, but Christianity has always been indelible to our social fabric.”

AlterNet interviews Nancy L. Cohen, author of “Delirium: The Politics of Sex in America,” about why “sexual fundamentalists” still hold such much political power, despite shrinking as a demographic (in essence they’ve slowly entrenched themselves into the Republican base and presidential nominating process). Quote: “The secret to understanding American politics right now is to understand how these extremists are less popular yet more powerful than we imagine. The GOP platform is a good object lesson about how sexual fundamentalists operate within the Republican Party. The delegates that ended up at the convention are the most extreme of the Republican base. The people who were elected to be on the platform committee are the most extreme of the extremists. That’s how you end up with a platform that says not only no abortion with no exceptions, even for rape, but also includes a lot of junk science that says it’s proven women become depressed from abortion or that there is fetal pain.”

Naomi Wolf defends her new book “Vagina” at Slate.com. Quote: To Wolf, criticism of her choice to couch that information in hippie-dippy terms like “The Goddess Array” has also been used to suppress discussion of female sexuality. The concept of “transcendence,” she says, is based in a long literary tradition, and though it “can be seen as a mystical term, it’s also a clinical term.” She is not actually “making a claim for some dimension of reality that exists outside of the brain.” Instead, she’s calling on the gods in a literary attempt to push back against 5,000 years of human history, in which the vagina has been “demeaned, debated, debased, and stigmatized,” she says. “I chose the phrase ‘The Goddess Array’ flippantly, I suppose, because it’s like, ‘fuck you.’ Seriously!” The coinage was an attempt to “carve out a space for women where they feel a radical sense of self-respect,” she says. “Is that coinage working for everybody? Obviously not. But if you have a better word for radical female self-respect, please tell me, because it does not exist.”

In a final note, farewell to Star Foster, our Pagan Portal Manager, who’s leaving Patheos to concentrate on her new life in Paganistan. Quote: “So this is my last post for this blog. My fond farewell. I need to focus on something other than Paganism for awhile, or at least Paganism at large. My personal practice has suffered, and needs some tender loving care. I won’t completely disappear. I might do a story or two for the PNC. One day, I might even blog again. But I’m going to be silent for a long while. I need that desperately.” Thank you for all your work Star, and I’m sure this won’t be the last we see of you!

That’s it for now! Feel free to discuss any of these links in the comments, some of these I may expand into longer posts as needed.

“[Bill] Donohue [president of the Catholic League] and many others have condemned the piece as unnecessarily offensive to Christians, and some say it has helped uncover hypocrisy in the White House. Those outraged by the photograph suggest President Barack Obama’s administration has shown bias by condemning “Innocence of Muslims,” the anti-Muslim film that mocks the Islamic prophet Muhammad and sparked Muslim protests worldwide, but not “Piss Christ.”

Michael Grimm, a Republican congressman from New York, bashed the president and his administration in a statement late last week for their “utter lack of respect for the religious beliefs of Americans.” “As a Catholic, I find ‘Piss Christ’ to be vulgar and offensive, just as many in the Islamic world found ‘Innocence of Muslims’ to be highly offensive. Like most Americans, I condemn both yet remain tolerant as the First Amendment demands. Unfortunately, this administration has yet to echo these views in regards to the religiously offensive ‘art’ here at home,” said Grimm.”

So with everyone talking about “Innocence of Muslims” and “Piss Christ” I guess the question has to be asked: should we allow the gods (and prophets) of our religions to be mocked? When an artist creates an inflammatory work, should religious communities go on the offensive? I should also point out that this isn’t simply a problem among monotheists, as some artists have received death threats from Hindus over artwork that certain groups found offensive or blasphemous. Even the Pagan-friendly company Sacred Source here in the US received death threats from angry Hindus over erotic statues depicting their gods. So this is a phenomenon that I believe affects any religion that accumulates enough power and influence. They all reach a point where they think mockery or blasphemy should not be tolerated, and work to discourage, or even violently control, images that unbalance their position or perceived status.

I fear the day when modern Pagan religions reach that point, and I hope that it never comes. I don’t think I could stomach knowing that a co-religionist was sending death threats to an artist or trying to vandalize their work, or working to intimidate galleries and museums from ever showing a piece that mocked our faith or gods. If you want to boycott the New Yorker because you didn’t like their Witch cartoon, fine, go ahead. If you want to write an editorial because something offended you, please do. But I feel that boycotts, petitions, and a healthy public debate should be the end-point not the beginning of tactics when a piece of art offends. Overreacting to ugly or offensive art betrays a vulnerability that is telling, it says that our gods are so weak, and our faith so small, that a painting or picture or movie is enough to harm both. The day when Paganism rises up against art is the day I part company with our movement. However, that’s just my perspective, I can’t claim to be a moral arbiter for modern Pagans, and no doubt there are those who envy the Catholics, Muslims, and Hindus their power and influence in these matters.

So what do you think? When a piece of art offends should we go on the offensive? What are the acceptable limits to voice our displeasure? Is it enough to simply give our opinion a voice, or should we apply social and political pressure to silence voices we don’t like? Should a Pagan “Piss Christ” be hounded for all time by angry adherents, or do we simply acknowledge that we can’t control the world and those who might offend us?

Please keep discussion on this post on the topic of how we should respond to art that offends, derailing comments that merely bash one religion or another will be deleted.

There are lots of articles and essays of interest to modern Pagans out there, sometimes more than I can write about in-depth in any given week. So The Wild Hunt must unleash the hounds in order to round them all up.

Former political candidate and (alleged) Witchcraft-dabbler Christine O’Donnell is making news again thanks to the publication of her new book “Troublemaker,” where she addresses the “dabble-gate” missteps of her 2010 Delaware senate campaign. O’Donnell calls the infamous “I’m not a Witch” ad “a wrong-headed move, made for all the wrong reasons, but it was mine.”

Here at Patheos P. Sufenas Virius Lupus asks “what does sexual liberty look like?” Lupus notes that “as polytheists, and as people who claim to be “earth-based” and “nature-based” in their spiritualities and theologies, there is absolutely no reason to view gender variance or diversity of sexual orientation—which exists in abundance in non-human animal natures—as anything to be upset over or worried about, so long as it is carried out in ways that are also appropriate to human nature and social conventions.”

Finally, let me give a warm welcome to the Pagan Newswire Collective’s news bureau: PNC-Texas (aka Lonestar Pagan)! They’ve already got some great stuff up, and I look forward to their future participation. Oh, and while I’m on the subject of the PNC, we’re looking for a motivated media-savvy volunteer to be our new Bureaus Coordinator, if you’re interested in this important role, do drop us a line.

That’s it for now! Feel free to discuss any of these links in the comments, some of these I may expand into longer posts as needed.